Fire Power
by emjalen
Summary: The battle is won, evil has been defeated, and the rightful king is ruling. Now the dust is settling, the post-victory high is over, and a human witch is wondering why her elven warrior-prince lover wants her. Because no one ever writes about after the war and I'm sick of the fics that don't take into account the complications of human/elven relationships.


**Disclaimer:** This story doesn't have a set timeline because I don't know who the characters are, so: nothing Tolkien written has been inherited in any way, shape, or form by the writer under the alias emjalen. Or my copy of the Two Towers wouldn't be held together with tape.

**Summary:** The battle is won, evil has been defeated, and the rightful king is ruling. Now the dust is settling, the post-victory high is over, and a human witch is wondering why her elven warrior-prince lover wants her.

* * *

It's not the whispers that get to her. Or the stares, or the rumors that follow her, or the disapproving, judging gazes, or the way the crowds part around her.

It's not the cruel jibes and insinuations, or barbed, barely veiled interrogations thrown out when her lover isn't around.

It's not even the way his family, especially his mother, looks at her.

It's the look on his face when she tells him that she can't have children.

Those eyes that she had come to love, not because they were beautiful, but because they told her what he was thinking, threw her back into the past.

When he thought she was an agent of the Enemy.

When he had hated her.

When he was trying to kill her.

When she was on the ground, his sword cutting into her throat, his breath hot on her face, immortal eyes blazing into startled mortal ones as his hips ground down into her's with a lust he'd thought she'd bewitched into him.

_"It happens," she'd told him. "The damage done, internally…" She looked away, blew out a breath. "Basically, I've taken too many blows to the abdomen to support life."_

_"How long have you known this?" his voice was soft- but not gentle. _

_"Since I was fourteen."_

"Shhh, shhh, you're safe now, he's dead, you don't ever have to go back to that place again...they're all dead; you killed them all…"

_His tone could no longer be defined as soft, though he didn't raise voice; an icy growl. "Yet you didn't choose to tell me until now, after we have been betrothed before all of my people?" _

_The implications hit her like a hot knife to the heart, and even as she stumbles, she lashes back. _

The first thing she sees when she looks in the mirror are the scars.

She's not old, not by elven standards, or even by human standards. But they're there are the same.

Her wrists and the pale skin of her inner forearms are a network of thick white scar tissue; all self-inflicted. Magic is never without a price.

Her hands are hardly better off; her gloves protected her from the worst of the near constant fighting of the last year, but they're still at torn mess of blistered, ripped skin, and what's not red and inflamed is callused and knicked.

For the most part, she's lucky. She's paid the blood price for magic, and it, and Lady Luck, have protected her. She has the odd scar, here and there, but witch armor is tough, nasty stuff that doesn't like being touched by anything but its witch's skin and reacts accordingly.

When she lifts her shirt, she can see her still see ribs, despite it being peace time for sixth months now.

_Who would want you?_

and

_Why do you need me to say the words?_

Her breath speeds up, and when she meets her eyes in the mirror, all she sees in an ocean of sparking black.

_Black and red, red and black._

Because that's all she was.

Blood sticky between her fingers, veins choking on black magic, a head full of red curls, black eyes sparking with her mother's legacy of heka, a stained sword clenched in one fist, a palmful of mage fire in the other, and covered in the spiky, black scales that made up witche armor.

_Fire power._

Maybe that's he wanted, her elven prince. He was fierce. So fierce. She knew, even now, that he couldn't stand elven women of his father's court, found them too innocent, too childish.

He was warrior.

It was her strength that had gained his grudging respect, her fierce witchcraft that had gained his admiration.

Tears stung in her eyes.

_She had been such a fool._

After all, he'd never said he'd loved _her_.

Just the warrior witch who would bring such strength and power to his line.

_And she had been so stupid to trust him, to open her heart to him, to think that he had loved her for __**her**__. Somewhere, her old master was cackling in the afterlife. _

_'I told you so.'_

* * *

A/N:Because no one ever writes about after the war. After the victories. Because there are no happy ever afters. There can be happiness, but there are no perfect endings, and no one gets out of wars unscathed. And because, in anything Tolkien wrote, elf/human pairings didn't happen without great price and it only seemed to happen to produce children of fantastic lineage.

_*Heka is a term taken from Stephanie Dray's Lily/Song of the Nile series; basically its Egyptian magic made manifest through the main character in abilities in controlling the element wind and her goddess sending her messages by carving hieroglyphs in her blood on inner forearms._

I hate to leave such a love author's note, but this was very much a new kind of writing and exercise for me. I'm new to this fandom; please, any feedback would be wonderful!


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